“How can it be, less than
a decade after the U.S. invaded Iraq, that the Iran debate is breaking
down along largely the same lines, and the people who were manifestly,
painfully wrong about that war are driving the debate this time as well?
Culturally, it’s a fascinating question—and too depressing for words.”

The real cause of Beinart’s
malaise isn’t hard to identify. It’s democracy, American-style,
i.e. rule by the screamers, that has him sick at heart. Under our system
of elected oligarchy, whoever screams the loudest gets the biggest piece
of the policy pie. Since most normal Americans don’t think about foreign
policy issues except when it’s thrown in their faces – a major war
breaks out, or if the blowback from one of our overseas extravaganzas
takes them by surprise – the debate on this subject is dominated by
a triad of special interest groups: 1) The military-industrial
complex, otherwise known as war profiteers, 2) the neoconservatives,
who believe in perpetual war as a matter of high principle, and 3) the
well-organized and wealthy Israel lobby, which has as its mandate to
keep the US engaged not only with Israel but with the global network of protectorates, alliances, and client states that make up the American
Empire.

Together with incidental allies
(e.g. the Albanian Mafia during the Kosovo conflict), these three forces
control the terms of the foreign policy discourse in this country, and
little deviation from the party line is tolerated. When it comes to
the pundits and the politicians, it doesn’t matter much whether they’re
ostensibly liberal or conservative: internationalism of one sort or
another is the order of the day. The “mainstream” media plays a
big role in orchestrating this unanimity, in part because they’re
easily manipulated – and often owned – by the very corporate and
ideological interests pushing the War Party’s agenda.

The methodology of the War
Party doesn’t vary all that much: in every war we’ve been duped
into fighting, the pattern has been pretty much the same. First, we
are given fabricated “intelligence,” which has been “cherry-picked”
to death and the sources of which are nearly always anonymous. “A senior
official” reveals Iran’s nuclear weapons program is much farther
along than anyone thought: a “top aide” to the White House tells
us “all options are on the table,” and ready to go. Eventually we
reach the climactic moment when the President hauls out some
incriminating
“evidence” of the Enemy’s evil intentions, as when George W. Bush
said the Iraqis were planning to bomb American cities with unmanned
drones, and seeking uranium from the African nation of Niger. Those
“drones” turned out to be nothing more than gliders that couldn’t make it across the Mediterranean, let alone the Atlantic
Ocean – but by the time this was proved, it was far too late. As for that
Niger uranium, the documents detailing the evidence were debunked as
crude forgeries, a detail that nearly derailed the administration’s war plans.

Such brazen lies are hardly
a Bushian innovation. If we go all the way back to FDR, and the run-up
to World War II, there are plenty of examples of even bolder prevarications.
My favorite is when the old liar got up there on Navy Day, in 1941,
and declared:

“Hitler has often protested
that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s
government – by the planners of the new world order.
It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler
proposes to reorganize it.”

The map was a British forgery,
and while the more charitable among my readers won’t assume he knew
it was fake, I’ll simply point to FDR’s well-known record as a fibber of the first
order and leave
it at that.

In short, prior to launching
whatever crusade for “democracy” and “peace” our rulers have
in mind, the American people are routinely treated to a campaign of
systematic deception, conducted both by government officials and their
friends in the mass media.

One problem for the War Party,
however, which has gotten progressively worse for them, is that there
are sectors within the government whose institutional biases
tend to resist the march to war. In the 1930s and 40s it was a certain element of the military, which disbelieved
in FDR’s British-created map, and thought we should tough it out until
Hitler and Stalin destroyed each other, like scorpions in a bottle.
In our own era, too, mid and top-level officers – none too eager to
see their troops sacrificed on the altar of some politician’s ambition
— remain one of the bulwarks against imperialist wars. Add to this
sections of the national security bureaucracy, whose job it is to assess
threats, and the intelligence and diplomatic communities, and you have
a built-in resistance to the kind of manipulation engaged in by every
wartime administration since Woodrow Wilson’s day.

The anti-interventionist resistance
inside the government has ways of pushing back against the War Party,
and we saw that last week in the Los Angeles Times, with the
revelation of the long-lost post-2007 National Intelligence Estimate,
a previous version [.pdf] of which determined Iran has not decided to pursue
a nuclear weapons program. As the Timesput it:

“As U.S. and Israeli officials
talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran’s
nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies
don’t believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb. A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment
circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view,
originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence
estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build
a nuclear warhead in 2003.”

The New York Times followed
this report up a few days later with one including pushback from the
War Party, citing those who “criticize the C.I.A. for being
overly cautious in its assessments of Iran, suggesting that it is perhaps
overcompensating for its faulty intelligence assessments in 2002 about
Iraq’s purported weapons programs, which turned out not to exist.
In addition, Israeli officials have challenged the very premise of the
2007 intelligence assessment, saying they do not believe that Iran ever
fully halted its work on a weapons program.”

Leave it to Judith Miller’s
alma mater to get the neocon party line in there: actually, this contention
the CIA got it “wrong” on Iraq is the exact opposite of what really
happened in the run-up to the invasion. It was the CIA that struggled mightily againstrelentless pressure from the office of the Vice
President to provide an intelligence-based justification for war. This
job was left to the manifold “rogue” sub-agencies, such as the ad
hoc “Office of SpecialPlans,” that did an end-run around the mainstream
intelligence community and fabricated – there is no other word for
it – the “intelligence” that lied us into war.

The same pattern is repeating
itself as the War Party gears up for an attack on Iran. By leaking the
supposedly “highly classified” NIE to the media, the analysts and
officials in the bowels of Langley are pushing back against the drive
to drag us into another major conflict in the Middle East.

A desire to protect their turf
and a healthy nationalism combine, in these national security professionals,
both military and civilian, to inoculate them against the war hysteria
that so easily grips other sections of our elites. Whether they can
get out their side of the story when the “mainstream” media is arrayedagainst them – after all, if the Iranians aren’t pursuing “weapons
of mass destruction” it’s a much less exciting and dramatic narrative
– remains to be seen.

Leaks such as this one aren’t
aimed at our lawmakers and policy wonks, who have already largely made
up their minds and are just waiting to the green light from the President
– or the Israelis, as the case may be. The leak is aimed at two targets:
the American people, and the White House.

The second to last thing President
Obama wants is another war, especially one with the kind of economic
consequences a military conflict with Iran is likely to have. The very
last thing he wants, however, is to preside over a dramatically
failing economy as the election season rolls around, while the Republicans
rail at his “appeasement” of Tehran and oil prices continue to skyrocket.
Never mind that those price hikes can be traced directly back to our
provocations directed at Iran: the average American is likely to blame
hostile foreigners rather than our own government officials for the
uptick. When the political price for not attacking gets higher than
the potential price of going to war, the President will cave – as
he has most of the time on substantive issues.

The NIE leak gives him less
room to maneuver between the contending factions within his administration,
and delivers a big blow to the War Party, which has been agitating for
a revision of the NIE ever since it blew Dick Cheney and the neocons
out of the water back in 2007. While this is probably not enough to
lift Beinart out of the black pit of his depression, that our spooks
are holding their ground is good news indeed.

Now it remains for the rest
of us to get the truth out to the American people. And the best way
to do that is by supporting Antiwar.com, the number one anti-interventionist
web site. Read by hundreds of thousands the world over, Antiwar.com
is dedicated to exposing the War Party’s lies as fast as they are
uttered: we’ve been on the job for sixteen years, manning the ramparts
24/7 – but we can’t continue to do it without your financial support.

Your tax-deductible donation
is absolutely essential to getting out the truth about the rush
to war with Iran. The War Party never lacks for resources to get its
message out: we, on the other hand, have only a single resource –
you.

Sing it with me now-
♬Over there…
kill the Muslims over there…
cause, well, just because…
over there!

sherban

Excellent article showing ,as Marx-Lenin did,the real pushers to war:the profiteers.So the wars have material causes and not at all idealistic ones(democracy,freedom).But this reality is so blatant that is hard to understand how American people don't see it.Justin explanation :"Since most normal Americans don’t think about foreign policy issues except when it’s thrown in their faces"is not enough.When the wars have human (hundreds of thousand of people killed,countries destroyed) and economic terrible consequences even for US it is inexplicable how people like Republican candidates can get even one vote.While their struggle becomes stronger ,their discourses became more belicose and as such more attractive for more supporters.So here the explanation of some few who gain from wars is not enough,here needs an explanation for what make millions to adhere to a criminal policy.

WhichWaldenPond

I think that the American population doesn't see the reality of our wars because the reality of the wars is 1) hidden from them by debt funding of wars, 2) hidden by the volunteer army, 3) hidden by media not showing the deaths of US soldiers nor of the local nationals they kill in combat or in atrocities, and 4) hidden by mythic history of WWII. Call any current tyrant "Hitler", say that any current tyrant wants a second "Holocaust", and the American mind is back to D-Day and seeing our newest war as a Hollywood sequel. A clean, just, virtuous, heroic, world-saving war for the betterment of humanity. That is how the Iraq War was seen, and that is how the Iran War will be seen. By design, by planning, by propaganda preparing the population to see obvious, unprovoked aggression as national self-defense.

Generalissimo X

while that's essentially true, i would argue that the founders considered being a citizen, as opposed to a subject, as having obligations. that is to use one's rights to obtain information and as free thinking individuals contribute to the discourse and ultimately be able to influence the policy(s) of our republic. americans by and large have completely abdicated this responsibility and they themsevles are directly culpable for the outcomes..i.e. constant illegal wars. yes, one can blame the media as such, but at the same time what is the learning curve for the amreican population? how long do they remain not only willfully ignorant, but they go so far as to revel and celebrate their stupidity. there are literally hundreds of outlets with truthful reporting and information. the laziness and sheer stupidity and/or cognitive dissonance of americans is beyond the pale at this point. i was just reading a msm blog about bradley manning and most comments were saying he should be shot, tortured, etc. etc. sure you can blame the media, but i'd say it's the american public that is to blame for being so stupid as to listen.

Russia , China,Pakistan, Turkey ,maybe India and others stand behind Iran. It would not be easy this time.

John

I must protest that Americas involvement in WWII was necessary to the worlds freedom. That FDR lied about Hitlers plans to cross the Atlantic is a mute point (if in fact true) when all of Europe and Asia would have been Axis dominated. As for the rest of the piece I'm in agreement. Its sad all U.S. wars since WWII have been unnecessary.

Rhenry

This is why I contribute – I am no Raimondo dittohead, by any means, but he hits 'em a lot more often than he misses 'em…which puts his batting average at about three times the average of the plethora of pathetic pundits plaguing the press.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].